Yarn supply



N. FT. LAHR YARN SUPPLY Nov.` 5, 1940.

F`i1ed Aug. 18. 1939 md" L :lo therein.

Patented Nov. 5, 1940 PATENT OFFICE YARN SUPPLY Nicholas F..Lahr, St. Joseph, Mich., assigner to Cooper, Wells & Company, a corporation of Michigan Application August 18, 1939, Serial No. 290,819

1 Claim.

This invention relates to the yarn or silk supply for use in a knitting machine. In knitting machines, particularly those used for the manufacture of wom-ens hosiery, it is customary to $3 Y have silk wound over a suitable paper tube or cone and disposed in a housing where it is kept under substantially constant humidity and temperature. A complete knitting machine may have anywhere from 18 to 24 heads and each nl head may have anywhere from 3 to 'l or even more cones of silk thread or yarn. Because of the preoccupation of the operator as well as the lack of economy of stopping an entire machine just to renew the silk in one head, it has been a() the practice heretofore to discard any cone during the normal machine stoppage when such cone has so little silk on it as to show the bottom of the cone therethrough.

When a cone of this character is discarded, it

gc generally has about two thousand yards of silk thread and may Ieasily suffice for one or two complete stockings. However, in order to prevent an operator from forgetting, it is the invariable rule to discard such a cone when the bottom shows t3 through. The various discarded cones have their contents rewound onto a single cone with the short lengths of yarn knotted together. Thus a rewound cone consisting of a plurality of old discarded yarn may have a large number of knots While an occasional knot will run through the needles of a knitting machine with little difliculty and not be objectionable in a stocking, the presence of a large number of knots in thread is highly undesirable since it increases raf, the chances of the thread being snagged on the needle or the knot catching and resulting in a broken thread. Hence, in eiect the collection of discarded silk represents a substantial waste which may run as high as 2% of all silk used.

.w By the invention herein described, this waste of silk is entirely eliminated. In fact the elimination of waste is so complete that out of a complete cone of silk no more than a fratcion of an inch of the silk need be wasted. Hence, for all 4,-, practical purposes, the utilization of silk in an eicient manner is rendered 100% perfect.

Briefly, this invention contemplates the disposition of silk in such a manner that a continuous length of silk is maintained from cone so to cone with the interposition of only one knot as a junction between the end of one cone and the beginning of the next cone. This knot may be relied upon to pass through the machine without any trouble and generally a single knot will 5., not be detected in any stocking. Hence, stoppage Figure 1 is an elevation side view of a knitting 10` machine in outline and the silk supply therefor;

Fig. 2 is a detail View of two cones of silk superposed; and

Fig. 3 is a detail of the plug used in the top cone.

Inasmuch as the details of the knitting machine are immaterial, no attempt will be made to describe the machine except to refer to it in general by reference to numeral I0. This machine is of a flat bed type and may have any number of heads. As is well known, each head may have any number of yarnr carriers supplied with its own individual yarn. Inasmuch as the invention relates to each individual yarn supply and is merely duplicated where more than one yarn supply is provided, only one complete yarn supply will be described.

Machine I0 is adapted to be supplied with any number of threads of silk, one of which is shown as II which passes through suitable tensioning means l2 being supplied from a cone I3 disposed in a housing I4. Within this housing predetermined temperature and moisture conditions may obtain in accordance with well known practice.

Referring to Fig. 2, cone I3 comprises a paper form 20 of suitably stiif paper or cardboard and having the shape of the frustum of a cone. Yarn I I is wound on form 20 by winding machinery in any desired manner and has its inner or starting end 22 normally retained in position on the inside 23 of form 20 by means of a sticker 24.

When the supply of silk becomes low as may be evidenced by seeing the paper ofthe form 2l) through the silk, the following procedure is resorted to.

Inner end 22, that is the beginning of the silk during the winding operation, is pulled free of the sticker 24 and this free end 22 is thereupon tied to the outer end II' of the next full cone I3. The plug shown in Fig. 3 is thereupon inserted into the large end of form 20. This plug is preferably made of soft rubber and consists of a generally annular ring 30 having a smooth inner surface 3l and a uted outer surface 32. Both the inner and outer surfaces are adapted to engage the conical surfaces of form 20 and 20 respectively of the cones.

It is preferred that plug 30 engage the inside surface 23 of form 20 near the bottom thereof tightly enough to be retained thereby While the inside surface 3| of the plug is adapted to loosely engage the protruding end 33 of form 20. By virtue of the rubber construction, variations in dimension of form 20 will be tolerated while at the same time the friction of the rubber plug against the top side of the bottom cone I3' will be great enough to prevent relative rotation of one cone against the other. This is particularly important since the delicate coloring and nature of silk fabric used for womens hosiery makes any relative rotation between the cones dangerous to the continued Well being of the silk itself.

In practice, as silk II is pulled off of cone I3, the supply on cone I3 Will become exhausted and finally the last or inner end 22 of cone I3 will be reached. By virtue of the knot tying inner end 22 with outer end II of bottom cone I3 a continuous and unbroken piece of silk will result so that upon exhaustion of cone I3 the new supply I3 will then be used.

When cone I3 runs down, empty form 20 with plug 30 may be removed and cone I3 disposed above a new cone. The inner end 22 of cone I 3 may then be pulled loose from the accompanying tape 24 and tied to the next succeeding cone while plug 30 may be disposed in the bottom of form 20.

By virtue of the attachment of the inner end 22 or 22 as the case may be, of the silk to the inside of the form, it is possible toI begin method whereby discarded remnants of conesv are rewound to'gether and tied together as one composite cone, makes for a large number of knots passing through the machine and may result in one stocking having a large number of knots. While one knot may be tolerated in a stocking, more than one is objectionable and may result in the stocking being rejected as a second. f

What is claimed is:

Foruse in a knitting machine, a yarn supply consisting of at least two superposed cones of yarn, each cone consisting of a form with the yarn wound on, each form having the shape of a frustum of acone with ends of the form projecting beyond the yarn winding, the projecting small top end of one form telescoping into the projecting large bottom end of the adjacent form and a soft plug disposed between the opposed telescoping form surfaces and bearing against the end of the yarn winding at the small end of the form whereby relative rotation between yarn cones is eliminated.

NICHOLAS F. LAHR. 

